


gone fishing

by deniigiq



Series: no burden is he to bear [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Road Trips, Tattoos, Traveling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 06:19:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14231154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: The letter looks well-traveled even before he drops it into the wailing mouth of a blue mailbox on his way to the terminal.He presses his hand against the window as a wave goodbye to the dappled greens of Savannah on his way north to Charleston.(Steve loses his phone while on a mission; he thinks of his boos as he takes the long way home)





	gone fishing

**Author's Note:**

> steve deserves tattoos. let the man have tattoos.  
> I have been to exactly 1 of these places, so please suspend your belief with me.

He writes Sam a letter from a sweltering bus station in Atlanta. He swallows against the drugstore perfume of the woman beside him, against the smell and sting of artificial honey suckle and peach.

If he focuses on the honey suckle, he can pretend that the scabbing tattoos on his arms don’t itch.

But anyways. He writes Sam a crumpled letter in Atlanta, and by the time he gets to the greener swelter of Savannah, he’s just about ready to send it. The envelopes he bought at a Walgreens in Atlanta have been crushed under the jacket and first-aid kit in his pack; the stamps are in similar condition. The letter looks well-traveled even before he drops it into the wailing mouth of a blue mailbox on his way to the terminal.

He presses his hand against the window as a wave goodbye to the dappled greens of Savannah on his way north to Charleston.

***

 

He tries to not to fall in love with the Charleston skyline. But it’s tough going. He’s always been a city-slicker, hunting out beauty in the shades of grey and age which line his home, but there’s something about a city of color, of harsh blues, gentle reds, oranges, and piercing greens, that inspires not quite awe, but the kind of appreciation that throbs once deep in your chest.

He cradles an iced coffee on a bench outside an old café as he wastes away the minutes before his bus arrives.

***

 

Raleigh is a city which climbs up from its flat planes of green. The white trims of houses and buildings pierce the landscapes around them; at night, when the earthy tones of the buildings fade into the dark, those trims look like sketches of clean, straight bones.

The tats on his arms no longer itch. Their black lines weave up from his wrists, feathering Judith’s breasts before reaching the deltas resting on her shoulders on the one side. The contours of a few of Mucha’s lilies arch up into the bend of his elbow on the other.

In the kitschy souvenir shop next to the station, he finds a postcard. A local artist has painted the brilliant whites of an empty bottle of Jack. In sepia and chartreuse, they’ve filled the bottle with two blooming lilies, their stems forming an ‘X’ in the base of the bottle. Steve only has a ballpoint pen, but he sketches in a third before pealing a stamp and dropping the card in a mailbox.

Squinting against the sunlight pouring in through his latest window, he watches a mother cry into the shoulder of her son in the moments before he climbs aboard with the rest of them. To Roanoke. Not the one where settlers were lost, the one in Virginia.

Not for the first time, he thinks of his ma berating him for the lilies on his arms.

“Lilies are for funerals,” her voice grumbles over the buzz in the back of his head.

***

 

 _Dear Sam_ , the letter in his hands begins, _I miss you. Found the guys, took them out. The shield’s been attracting too much attention, I mailed it your way last Thursday._

_I lost my phone somewhere, but I didn’t have time to go back and find it. Sorry. I know you’re probably worried as hell. Honestly, though, it’s kind of a relief. I didn’t know how noisy my life was until I lost it. I’ll get a new one once I get back, can you help me pick out a new model?_

_I’m taking the scenic route home. It’ll take me a little while to get there, but I’ll write when I can. Tell Buck that I’m fine; I’m not dead, I love him, and I’ll bring him a souvenir home._

_Love you, Sammy. See you soon,_

_SGR_

***

 

The jacket in his bag is too thick and heavy for summer, but it serves as a good blanket on the way to Roanoke. He nuzzles into it and thinks he can smell home. The kid whose mother cried over him blinked bleary eyes for the first fifteen minutes of the ride.

He almost moves into the empty seat next to the boy to give him a hug, but then remembers that some journeys are important to take alone.

Roanoke has classic America painted all over it; “Coca Cola” grins in bright red from the side of a concrete building. A giant neon red and white star overlooks the city mounted on iron stilts. There are wide flat streets and a stupidly blue sky. The mountains in the distance are green and blue and misty in the early morning light.

He could never have lived here. This wasn’t his America. His America was skyscrapers and subways and sneers. His America was deep, saturated colors hiding behind hardwood and panes of glass. It was loud, barking laughs and whiskey and moaning music. The smell of must and mold in every corner.

The America in Roanoke was too…well it was too something and he only stays long enough to jump off one bus and onto another.

***

 

The postcard he receives in the mail has bent corners, but the outline of an extra lily in the bottle makes Sam’s eyes water a little. Buck tacks it to the fridge with a magnet photo of the three of them at the beach. He beams at it proudly and steals Sam’s hot cup of joe to lure him into the light at the dining room table.

He leaves Sam for yoga with a kiss almost as searing as the pavement outside.

***

 

Richmond, Virginia is a hell of a city. It hits all the right places. Just enough grey, just enough neon, and just enough green to balance it all out. There’s a certain grandeur to Richmond to make it suave and brash. He can’t decide if it reminds him more of Buck or of Sam because sometimes their sweetness and boldness blends together into a languid river.

He picks up a silver spoon at a huge red-brick visitor center.

“Give me liberty, or give me death,” the spoon whispers. The words are nestled in the curls of flora.

The bus station there is one of the biggest he’s been in on his trip home and reading the board of arrivals makes him feel like he’s at an airport. Being surrounded by automation and wide stations makes his stomach twist in anticipation: home is so close.

***

 

It takes 2 and a half hours to get to DC. He spends the time tracing the lines on his arms. He’s too excited to sleep or read.

***

 

As soon as he sees grey concrete, he throws on his pack and vibrates. The minutes the driver takes in parking stretch into hours. The shuffle of people out of seats and down the stairs takes so long he can’t keep daydreams of melting clocks out of his head.

He manages to rattle his way off the bus.

 He grabs a cup of coffee and a sandwich from the café on the corner of the train station, before half-sprinting, half-jogging to catch a train. He ignores the shutter of camera phones and knowing smiles as he throws himself through the doors of his train just before they close.

***

 

At 4:30 Sam starts edging towards the door of the group room. He gets caught and gets a round of laughs as his co-facilitator explains to the group that he’s being antsy because his boo just got back into town.

He is dismissed by cat calls and wolf whistles.

He meets up with a sweaty Buck armed with a bag from the hardware store, and they walk to the station. Buck is irritated about a leaky faucet in the guest bathroom. He shakes three different types of plumber’s glue and several different wrenches at Sam, moaning about their house’s lack of a decent toolbox. Sam knows that he’s just bitching to cover up his excitement.

***

 

They wait at the top of the stairs to the station.

Sam knows Buck’s caught sight of Steve because his whole body lights up. He follows Buck’s line of sight, leaning over the edge of the stairs and Steve looks up just in time to meet his eyes.

He beams up at the two of them and takes the stairs two at a time, his pace thwarted by fellow pedestrians. He’s barely hit the top step before he’s throwing his arms wide. The two of them pull him into a hug and out of the mouth to the subway.

He smells like coffee and cheap soap and leather. He’s got a fair amount of stubble peppered around his smile. He’s got a woman gazing lazily at them from one arm and a set of lilies wrapped around the other.

“Hi Sam,” he says. They haven’t heard his voice in more than week. “Hi Buck. I missed you.”

Sam grins at him and Buck starts dragged them in the direction of home.

“We missed you too,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> Steve's tats are of Gustav Klimt's "Judith and the Head of Holofernes" and some of Alphose Mucha's lilies from his "Les fleurs - 1898."


End file.
